Project Description
Antonino Calcagnadoro ( Rieti 1876 – Rome 1935 ), Refugees
Oil on cardboard cm 17 x 22 signed and dated ( 1922 ) lower right, entitled on the back, where appears the painter’s inscription “All’amico Carlini perché mi conservi l’affetto, Roma 1923”.
As regards the theme of this painting, we could think that the artist worked with too much delay respect to the newness and subjects of this kind are more suitable to the European cultural climate between the end of the 19th century and the beginnings of the new century. However, it should understand that the figurative universe of Calcagnadoro remains, along the whole duration of his activity, linked to his origins land and these specific realities. As Ines Millesimi noted, “there’s no smugness of social denunciation neither easy research for a sketching taste in these paintings, where maybe it is rather predominant a trace of populist symbolism. After all, the economic life of Rieti and Sabino territory remained until the advent of the Fascism very acute. For the inhabitants of the whole area the living conditions were dramatic: even in the Thirties the periodic emigration towards the Roman Agro was enormous, as much as was the emigration of a lot of farmers towards Brazil since the last years of the 19th century.
